The fate of Praetorian Earth in Dark Astoria? (spoilers)

Actually they come off as someone's first attempt at a custom MA faction. Their costumes are an explosion in a junk factory and their powers are a random assortment of the most recently-released "cool" powersets.

You're someone that finds Christmas lights frivolous aren't you?

Well, from Sam's standpoint, they might, they don't have a lot of room for intrigue, everything about them is pretty much spelled out early on:
They're the guides and ferrymen for souls to the afterlife, they used to be a lot nicer and more personable since the journey was important. Night Ward descends, they're cut off from the larger society of Drudges and are getting enormous surges of dead people and convert to a cold, bureaucratic system, that emphasizes efficiency over real quality.

Black knights are, while cool looking, kind of flat and also filled with idiots. Pendragon especially who takes "dumb blond" to ridiculous heights.

Lastly, what might be semi-interesting for Sam to know is a major Issue 23 spoiler, so I'll give folks a chance to look away now.

...

WARNING: HUGE SPOILER AHEAD

...

AVERT YOUR GAZE!

...

Are you sure you wanna see it?

...

Last chance to turn back...

...

Okay...

...

Here goes...

The Talons of Vengeance refer to a Babylonian mother of monsters as their mother, I infer from this that the Talons of Vengeance, as a whole are a fraud. They don't actually care about morals, oaths, or anything like that. They revel in slaughter and murder and driving people to their madness. So... Actually, they're even shallower than Sam might have thought.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I suspect that Going Rogue was such a resounding failure that they are either not willing to bet on that level of storytelling any more, or had to lay off every single one of their writers. I don't know.

It certainly seems like either everything is exactly what it appears, or the 'clever tweeests!' are so awkward I feel embarrassed for them (Calvin Scott, I'm looking at you).

Fascinating. I don't recall encountering the Drudges or Night Ward at all inside Dark Astoria. Perhaps you'd care to tell me where, within the context of this thread's subject, those appear?

Yeah, we're kind of in a no-win situation right now. What's not very shallow and obvious is instead a "twist" that hurts my brain because it both makes no sense and seems like trying WAAAY too hard. It's like our writers are bipolar - either they can't be bothered to think too hard about those stories, or otherwise their heads explode with such violent force that my brain gets mood whiplash. Moderation, people. Your stories don't have to be made up of boring predictable plots punctuated by ZOMGREVEALZOMG every now and then. Drop hints, ask questions, imply depth and just see where that leads you. It's not all lows and reveals.

Ironically enough, Dark Astoria is probably the perfect storm of positive circumstances and pretty much the BEST that could ever come out of this writing method. Yeah, we know about Mot pretty much from the moment we set foot in Dark Astoria, the Knives and Talons have no real backstory and it's more or less obvious this will come down to a confrontation with the dark god. The identity of the Letter Writer is... Yeah, it's "It was random person A who was behind it all along" as Tami Baker says, mostly because nothing is ever made of the guy's identity. Still, it's not an offensive reveal and he's written pretty well. There's also Max, who I thought was a very cool idea, but unfortunately, this doesn't involve Malta proper, which is a disappointment.

What I'm saying is that aside from Max and the Letter Writer, the story is pretty much straightforward and predictable. Tielekky threw me for a loop just because bringing her in was ambitious, but like the others, she does pretty much nothing, so even with her the story was predictable. But it was the good kind of predictable, shallow fun. My own Kim got to be a badass, she got to save the world and she didn't have to take lip from anyone while doing it. Mot is built up as a credible threat quite nicely and the conclusion is satisfying. It's about as good as a predictable, shallow story can get.

Sadly, what this means is unless new stories gain a touch of depth, it's going to be downhill from here. They've already told the best direct story they could without expending even more of their banked cards. Bringing in Tielekku and revealing the Letter Writer really pushed the Dark Astoria story to great heights, but those are already expended. You can't use them again, and there isn't that much left. There's pretty much just the Rikti Homeworld left and possibly the Circle of Thorns baddies like Hequat and the Prince of Demons, but that's it. There's a finite amount banked trump cards the writers can use because, frankly, the new plots they've been making in recent years don't really carry the same kind of weight in a story.

I actually liken this to Mass Effect 3, ending notwithstanding. The story was actually quite mediocre by BioWare standards, but it subsisted almost entirely on culminations of exciting plotlines that previous games set up. Almost nothing the game brings in as a new plot element works. Most of the strongest moments are based on plots from the prequels or romances from the prequels. Ending notwithstanding, it made for a good game, but it was very obvious that this would be the LAST good game in the series just because it blew its entire load and there was nothing left to use as a hook by the end. I hope they don't plan to make an MMO out of it because Mass Effect has literally NOTHING left to offer unless some genius writer pulls a rabbit out of a hat and creates an equally exciting new universe to follow-up after essentially wrapping up all of the existing one.

City of Heroes writers: You did a GREAT job with Dark Astoria, but you also made many mistakes. Just remember that you're not going to have the trump cards you did there forever.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I haven't done much in Dark Astoria yet, but I really appreciate the effort they took to make it feel like villains have a reason to be there, as well. It's such a small thing, a few lines of dialogue here and there, but it makes a huge difference. So kudos for that.

He was complaining that there are no new villain groups that he can identify with, so I thought he might like the Drudges because he's British

Yes, but that's not what BViking asked. You're a smart girl, so you've likely figured this out already. However, in case you haven't (or flat don't care), I'll tell you anyway.

This is a spoiler thread about DARK ASTORIA. Not ANYTHING that's currently on beta. There are those who are avoiding the beta boards to avoid being spoiled for issue 23. Please try to be considerate of those who don't wish to be spoiled about future releases.

We don't talk like that. Most of our police officers don't even dress like that these days. I'm surprised they don't have Dredges in bowlers hats standing around with the cup of tea emote.

Would you elaborate on your definition of this?

There's almost no mystery in Dark Astoria beyond the first couple of arcs, and the couple of big reveals don't really matter in such a way that's dependent on the nature of the reveal. I can even put this in the form of a list of questions.

1. Who are the Knives of Vengeance? That's obvious, and it's in their descriptions - they're Knives of Artemis mercenaries who have been transformed by the Talons of Vengeance to be pretty much the Talons of Vengeance by another name.

2. Who are the Talons of Vengeance? Murdering monsters. That's just about the extent of them. This isn't really addressed in Dark Astoria proper, but I know about them because they showed up in First Ward which, chronologically, takes place before the DA arcs. They're evil, they want to kill, we need to stop them.

3. Who is the letter writer? That's a big reveal so I won't mention it even despite the spoiler tag, but here's my question - what of it? The only resources he employs are Ajax, Protean and Heather Townsfield. He doesn't even travel through time but on one occasion. It could have been pretty much everybody else that people have guessed he might be and the story would have worked just as well. He doesn't even hold any real trump cards, and serves to essentially be wrong.

4. What of Tielekku? She could have been a big reveal if we didn't know about her from the Scroll of Tielekku arc, but involving her is a good idea. But she doesn't DO anything. She shows up, acts pompous, gets omnomnommed, then does nothing for the rest of the arc bar a few words of encouragement. Oh, yes, she helps put up a barrier... That David Hazen made all the preparations for. In essence, Tielekku is a plot device, and she has something like 5 lines of dialogue, which is about on par with the VERY brief cameo Hequat makes in Scirocco's Patron arc. She's a surprise, but it doesn't amount to anything.

5. Who is David Hazen? I honestly don't know, and it honestly doesn't matter. He found Mot, he set up some wards, he went insane, the end. But WHO was he? Nobleman? Mystic? Librarian? Intellectual? We don't know. For all the story reveals, he had no past, he only existed to set up some wards and go mad. When he first showed up in the Peregrine Island mission, I thought he'd be important, a recurring mystery man who held a dark secret that would eventually be revealed, but no. He shows up, he disappears from the story and he's only mentioned once more to explain the wards that we never see. For all I know, it could have been Father Henri who fought Mot. As a point of fact, that would have been kind of cool. It would have been a bigger reveal at any rate.

6. What about the Banished Pantheon? Meh, they're faceless goons now. Not like they were ever much more, but at least back in the pre-DA content they show some initiative of their own. Here, they're essentially puppets. They have no personality, they have no initiative, they exist only to serve. Which works, I guess, but it would have worked better if they were the only flat, predictable faction. And I STILL would have wanted to see at least a dissenting shaman or two, even if it's just an NPC I rescue from a ritual who's convinced he doesn't want to worship a god who wants him dead.

7. What do we do about Mot? We fight it, we beat it, the end. It's pretty much what one would expect. Oh, sure, the exact nature of how we fight Mot is kind of creative, but we know there's an unleashed dark god as soon as we set foot in Dark Astoria, it's safe to assume we'll fight and, sure enough, we fight it and win at the end. Everything in-between is essentially sidequests that have to be done to prepare for that final encounter. It's mostly padding, especially destroying the X of Vengeance twice in two whole story arcs.

I will give the story some credit for surprising me, however. The nature of the Sentinel surprised me, genuinely. It would have surprised me more if Sister Solaris' persona mission hadn't spoiled it first, but it still works. The true nature of Max was a surprise, as well. I suspected it was something like that, but I didn't expect the writers would go through with it. Sadly, Malta isn't actually involved, even with their standard 50+ NPCs, which I consider to be a major missed opportunity.

---

My point is this - we go to Dark Astoria to fight an evil god, we wrestle with some one-dimensional no-backstory monsters, and we defeat an evil god. And that's it. That's why I say the story is predictable - it unfolds exactly like how you'd assume it would unfold just from the basic zone description with no real surprises of any actual merit. The zone features maybe three or four factions total. The Knives of Vengeance had no depth, the Talons of Vengeance have no depth, the Tsoo have much potential but end up having no depth and the Banished Pantheon have no depth, aside from being minions of Mot. Yes, there's the story of Scirocco, which I must admit was good, but again - it amounts to nothing but having a combat NPC to clutter my screen with sand tornados.

What would have been unpredictable to me? Let me list a few ideas:

1. The Knives of Vengeance aren't being forcefully recruited. The loser-tier Sisters are, but the Knives leadership has chosen this intentionally. Remember that cult one of Crimson's mission mentions? Well, that's real, but only a select few know about it. By summoning the power of Artemis, the leaders hope to be able to resist the madness of the Talons and so elevate themselves and their sisters into godhood, then eventually break away. They have an actual goddess on their side, right? Then at the end when their goddess has abandoned them, they offer to surrender and help, and we have a chance to accept.

2. The Tsoo in Dark Astoria are genuinely good and reformed, having seen the error of their ways through Mot's guilt trip. They still serve Tub Chi, but more and more realise he is not the honourable and just leader he claims to be. He doesn't want to stop Mot, he wants to take his power. After numerous battles, Hua Tov finally admits that what he's doing is wrong and helps the player take the god-killer sword from Tub Chi. In so doing, he redeems himself and is freed from the influence of Mot, serving as a valuable ally in the final battle.

3. Tielekku arrives, but she is not the kind, benevolent goddess we expected her to be. Myths about her say that she never believed people were worthy of wielding magic and indeed cast out Ermeeth for teaching magic to humans. This suggests that she is an arrogant, unforgiving goddess who believes humanity had no business engaging in the many magical wars that it has that got them here in the first place. As Mot is not part of the pantheon she banished and does not threaten war against other gods, Tielekku sees no reason to help people, and must therefore be convinced, and perhaps even fought against for a time. She undergoes and epiphany and realise humans have elevated themselves to where they are now worthy of the gods' good grace and understanding.

4. The Circle of Thorns aren't dead, and are in fact desperate to strike any alliance they can to stop mot, going as far as to offer the Prince of Demons entry into our world. The Prince of Demons himself cares nothing for Mot's antics, worried that if Mot destroys the Circle, the Prince is robbed of his main cadre of loyal followers. He sends a new breed of Behemoths as a token of his good graces, and we have to bargain with him, finding a way to get his help without letting him into this world. Or not getting his help and fighting harder missions, as an option.

5. Mot has an actual story of his ancient past, how he came to become the god of death, what his dealings were with the pantheon of banished gods and what he ultimately wants. Yes, he wants to be free, but then what? Kill everybody? And then what? Perhaps he wants to create a dark and horrible future like that one Portal mission. But does Mot really want to help the pantheon of banished gods return from the spirit world, or does he, like Requiem, fear he will have no place once his stronger brethren return? Perhaps he wants to rule over Earth alone?

6. How does Lughebu feel about this? From what I understand, the Banished Pantheon cultists are more or less his cultists, as I believe he is the leader of the pantheon of banished gods. Does he trust Mot to free him once he has achieved full power? Does he trust Mot to not want to summon the pantheon into a trap and consume their essence now that he has all this power? Would Lughebu not have his own splinter cell within the cultists who are secretly working on a backup plan to undermine Mot's ascension and use the power he has amassed in order to shatter the bounds of his own prison?

There are stories and angles that could have been put in which work contrary to expected and most direct path, but I just didn't really find any that had a meaningful effect.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

There is, actually. It's a vertical wall with symbols on it that look like those from Demon Summoning or the Runes aura. It's red, it's animated and it's mostly flat, right along the cemetery wall, extending high into the sky.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

This actually would have been pretty cool, indeed.

As far as Dark Astoria, my only real complaint about the new DA revamp is that the Tsoo are kind of randomly involved, and the explanation behind their involvement kind of comes from nowhere (unless I'm missing/forgetting some Tsoo stories along the way). Everything else is pretty well set up (okay, maybe not the Knives, as you point out), but the Tsoo thing doesn't really work, although I do like the idea behind them being involved (I just figured it would have something to do with their connections to ancestor spirits being why they were concerned with the god of Death.)

The story might've been passable if any of the most popular guesses other than [why is this a spoiler?] had been the Letter Writer, but the Dark Astoria storyline doesn't exist in a plot bubble, no matter how many people who dislike the Praetorian narrative or even Dark Astoria itself wish it was. If what Dante's been saying is true, the writing regarding Ouroboros and the Battalion has been hashed out for a while, so I think its safe to assume that [spoiler] has been planned to be the L.W. since at least Issue 12; even if he doesn't bring anything relevant to the table [edit]in regards to the Astoria plot[/edit] that any of the other L.W. candidates couldn't have done themselves (except that thing he kills Diabolique with), that may change in the future since they're going to be bringing Rularuu back into the picture.

I'm not sure if this bit of commentary would satisfy the "But why did they bother revealing the L.W. NOW instead of when we got to the Rulaaru part?" question. I'll just speculate that it's just working backwards from a desired plot point (defeating Tyrant) to a solution. Just speculation.

And on the topic of other narratives occurring at the same time, like the bits with Scirocco...I'm sure the story wouldn't have changed too much if Scirocco and company had been left out, but the writers are obligated to keep trying to introduce more potential plot threads leading in and out from whatever they work on if they think it fits. Maybe they all won't start out great or end up great but at least they don't risk the worse situation of flat out running out of material. I'm sure you already understand the concept so I won't mention it further. Frankly, I thought Scirocco and Ice Mistral showing up was an alright fit.

I don't understand. If we didn't know anything about her before, why would it have been a big reveal? I think the only other mentions of her are in Mu'Drakhan's arc and in the Midnighter Club.

I think this is an occasion where you set your expectations way too high. The first time I ran DA, I got the impression that Hazen was pretty stuck in the between-realm where he was. The alternative was to get eaten by Mot. I don't recall reading anything from that encounter that would imply otherwise. In any case, I never expected him to show up again except in clues and such.

Now see, what you considered 'padding' and 'sidequests' is what I considered 'believable floundering'. Funny, right? But again, my first impressions were different from your own. My Blaster plummets into Dark Astoria, where Death Incarnate has abruptly reappeared yesterday after several strange eons, the city is swarming with mystics and monsters, former residents are flooding back in like lemmings, the world is about to end and I'm supposed to do...what, exactly? Waltz into Moth Cemetery and cast Life 2? My Blaster has Clarion Core, not Barrier Radial.

My Blaster doesn't know what to do right off the bat. In fact, Mot's reappearance has taken nearly everyone by surprise; nobody really knows what to do and the typical last resort of 'trying killing it to death until it dies' isn't an option. All my Blaster knows is that the opposition has a head start.

Okay, okay. I guess that doesn't really offer up a reason, we don't have to say excuse, for the X's of Vengeance to be there. You want a solo storyline pointed at Incarnates, though? That IS what you asked for, right? And you want something a bit more meaningful than 'fight some huge Bad?' Consider your opponents. On one hand, you have the X's of Vengeance, who believe that a person's past is something that can never be overlooked or overcome to any degree, regardless of who they may have become; any dissent on this is considered blasphemous. On the other, you have Mot who, judging by its comments to you and Praetor Duncan, despises others for trying to rise above (or otherwise escape) their present circumstances instead of just accepting them...which is classic bad guy irony considering what it's trying to do.

Both positions conflict directly with the philosophy of becoming an Incarnate.

Could you have removed the bits with the X's of Vengeance without altering the written plot significantly? Probably. I wouldn't go as far to say that the fight against the X's was meaningless in any sense.

Pretty rudimentary lit analysis? Sure. I'd encourage you to take the above into consideration, though, when you ask such questions in the future.

They do? Where's that at?

The CoT is still around, even though I'm sure a bunch died to death as a result of Mot. Maybe I just misunderstood what you meant, though.

This might've been nice if it had been able to fit in a way that made sense for us to find out. Maybe we still will one day around the time when we fight the rest of the Pantheon.

If not for the fact that some of the Carnival of Vengeance are male, I'd say it's because the Knives are the only female villain group for the Talons to target.

I have to admit, Tielekku showing up and them immediately getting nommed by Mot was one of my favourite bits of the arc. Everyone had been saying "Tielekku will save us!" and then she finally shows up and NOM. So, no, looks like the big bad Goddess was a stack of failcakes, I guess I'm going to have to save the world after all because I'm JUST THAT AWESOME {buffs nails on jacket}.

It's a spoiler because it's a BIG reveal, and I just don't want someone to stumble across it unwittingly. I know I put out a spoilers tag, but there's no need to leave this in regardless. At least I won't.

Also, I don't mean to say the Letter Writer's identity should have been somebody else or that it was a bad reveal or such. Hell, I was prepared to hate on the guy for how passive-aggressive arrogant he is in his letters, but in the actual story, he acts a lot like a puppy so I really didn't mind the character or the reveal. Maybe the choice of face, but that's besides the point.

What I meant was that he doesn't really do anything which required the Letter Writer. There's nothing in the story that's specific to HIM, which is the disappointment. You could have used Montague, War Witch or, hell, even Akharist and it wouldn't have been too much different. Being the Letter Writer should have given him some kind of an advantage, and I really didn't see that, to be honest. I mean, it's not BAD, I just wanted to see what the big deal is all about. Why is this character so important that we've been dragging his sorry *** through storylines since 2007? I'm not saying he should have been more instrumental and stolen more of our thunder, but I just kind of wanted him to do something only HE could do and that we just didn't get.

When I first saw Scirocco in Dark Astoria, my first thought was "Why didn't they send Ghost Widow? She's the expert on death and her existence is bound to Arachnos." Turns out Scirocco had a stronger story to go through, and I'm happy they involved him. Where the story concerns him, it's actually very well done, but the problem is that he gets about as much screen time as Detective Hopp and, heaven help me, Miss Bellarose. He has his big emotional scene, he has his change of heart and he even helps out, but the problem is the guy really descends into just a face in the crowd a lot of the time. I don't know... I guess being able to have a conversation with him and then another one with Ice Mistral which could hint at their true emotions might have helped, but it just seems like his story arc is wrapped up far too quickly and from then on it's "Scirocco will assist the Saints in combat. He's available from your phone menu."

Dark Astoria really doesn't have anything in it that's actually bad, is the real kicker. But it's so good I keep wishing more was done with some of the plot points and characters and side stories. I wanted to see more of it

Involving a literal god is always a big reveal, just because it's a big deal. Tielekku's manifestation should have been historic event, one which brings up philosophical and metaphysical questions and which causes people to question their own place in the world. It should have been given a LOT more gravity and, frankly, Tielekku herself should have been given a lot more honours. Make it a cutscene, make it a comic book pannel, have her appear in lightning from the sky which shatters the ground and creates a crater that's there at least in the instance. Or, hell, use the "phasing" tech and have Tielekku destroy a major Dark Astoria building when she shows up.

No. She pops into existence, says a couple of words, then omnomnom and we're back to square one. Total participation time: It can't have been more than 30 seconds. Total contribution: Absolute zero. I get that that's part of the point, but she doesn't FEEL like a goddess. To get to Hequat, I need to spend an entire story arc gathering books and ritual ingredients and finding a portal and crossing over and then I have to fight through an entire instance just to get to her, and I STILL feel Hequat deserved more.

Tielekku is a frikkin' GODDES. She shaped the destiny of the entire world, she invented magic and taught it to the other gods, she banished an entire pantheon of evil gods. She's better than this. I mean, her costume is very cool, but she's REALLY underutilised here. Even if I get that we can't have a god on our side making things too easy, I'd have at least wanted to do SOMETHING with her than have her stuffed in a fridge for most of the story.

That was my impression more so than my expectations, actually. Seeing him, he looked the sort to act as a spectral mentor and mission control, kind of like what Allistor does in SSA1.1. I mean, for someone whose name gets thrown around so much and who shows up at least visually, I just thought he'd do more. I don't know, maybe if we had to go find his spirit instead of finding his oddly specific journals? That's just the impression I got from meeting him, though.

I don't like a story that has "floundering" as a major component of it, is the problem. I don't have a problem of trying something and failing as long as it feels like it was fun and it advanced the story, but I do have a problem with it when it feels like it was put there specifically to pad things out. Consider, for example, To Save a Thousand Worlds. Almost 90% of that story arc is trying to find the scientists and mostly failing, then trying to find the other half of the scientists and mostly failing, then patching up dimensional ruptures over and over again, then trying to find the source and mostly failing and finally confronting elseworld Requiem. This thing is something like 20 missions long, and it doesn't really deserve more than three or four.

That's not to say that Dark Astoria was too short. Far from it. I just feel there were a LOT of very interesting concepts which could have been explored, but weren't because we spend so much time floundering. I firmly believe that any plot point in a good story needs to serve some kind of point to the overall plot. When it comes to video game plots, these plot points need to serve a tangible, visible purpose, rather than serving as pretend-solutions to pretend-problems. The X of Vengeance making Mot stronger is just such a pretend-problem - we're only ever told Mot is getting stronger, but this is never shown to us. His minions aren't getting stronger, his powers aren't growing. There's I guess exactly one point where he omnomnoms a bunch of people where I could say his power is growing, but...

It feels like "Your princess is in another castle!" Yes, you can explain it as a story, but a lot of this is just spinning our wheels in place and occasionally sliding sideways. It's finding three pieces of the plot device instead of finding just one without any real need to do so other than so it takes longer and features more fights. The X of Vengeance are the biggest offender in this regard. If it were JUST the Talons or JUST the Knives and we only had to defeat them once, then I wouldn't mind. It's an artificial obstacle to an artificial problem, but that's how these stories go. But when you start asking me to do it twice, I start to get the feeling you're out of ideas. And I know the writers weren't out of ideas, which is just that much more of a shame why we got the same story multiple times instead of getting something more interesting.

As you say - it's a very good idea. THAT is exactly what I wanted to see explored more and that is what I feel got a little lost in the shuffle. It just feels like at least a good chunk of Dark Astoria is solving secondary problems to find the means to solve primary problems to finally get the opportunity to solve the main problem. When you start going down into third and fourth tier of importance is when I start to feel we're getting sidetracked.

A random, non-related example: You need to defeat a bad guy, but to do it you need a sword. You can't buy the sword, you need to make it, but for that, you need a special blacksmit. He also needs special toos, but to get them, you need a special toolsmith. To make the sword, he needs special materials and to get them, you need to find special monsters, but to find them, you need a guide. And so on and so forth. Yes, the main storyline might be interesting, but when I start getting sidetracked down a branching path of nested objectives, I start losing focus of the main threat. And, sadly, the X of Vengeance really are such a nested objective.

We need to stop Mot, but to stop Mot we need to weaken him. To do that, we need to stop the Talons. To do that, we need first to stop the Knives. To do that, we need to figure out where they're coming from. To do that, we need to find Max. Max will help us, but only if we help him rescue three of his BFFs, though we can skip that. So we save Max's friends, he gives us the location, we go there, we stop the Knives. Now we need to figure out where the Talons live so we can stop them. To do that, we need to kill three Keres, and then a Mother Keres. And once all of that's done, what have we achieved? We ticked one box off a shopping list.

Now all we need is immunity to Mot's power, the ritual to summon Tielekku, the god-killer sword so Tub Chi doesn't kill her, David Hazen's journal and "Guns. Lots of guns." At that point it starts to feel to me like I'm playing Flight of the Amazon Queen all over again, because that's how point-and-click adventures tend to work.

Contrast that against, say, the Eternal Nemesis, an arc which is almost 90% padding. Most of this arc is spent trying to figure out what's going on, then turning out the conclusion was wrong and trying to figure out what's going on, then turning out it was a Nemesis plot all along and stopping it. The difference is that each new step in the arc rewards us with the one thing that the game can't pretend about - information for the player. With every new step, I learn more about the plot, and I can start trying to piece together the mystery before I have all the clues, so that when it's finally revealed, I can have the satisfaction of being completely wrong. Wait...

My point is that there's almost no mystery in Dark Astoria. Consider one of the story's more obvious roots - Silent Hill. When a Silent Hill game even bothers to HAVE a conventional plot, it's delivered in small chunks hidden in hints and clues that aren't obvious at first. Most of the game is spent trapped inside a horror that is too twisted to comprehend, and that's what makes it scary. We fear the unknown, because we have no static point that we can rely on for our own competence. When I know practically everything I need to do and practically all the reasons I need to do it, the horror aspect of it is diminished and I'm no longer afraid. A good scary story tells you just enough to be afraid of the dark, but not nearly enough to know what's in the dark to be afraid of. Introducing Mot within THE FIRST MISSION pretty much wipes out any mystery there might have been and sets an obvious end goal right from the start.

I say the plot is "predictable," because the plot makes no attempt to surprise me at any point. And I get that this is getting into the "trying way too hard" territory that I've chastised the writers for in the past, but there IS a middle ground between constant Shyamalan twists and no twists at all. The one twist there is - the omnomnom of Tielekku - is both incredibly obvious just because nothing's ever this easy, and also a purely utilitarian one: We lose our plot device. It's not a reveal, it's a "supposed to lose" fight. Aside from the Letter Writer, I really don't think there are any meaningful reveals in this entire storyline. And considering this is supposed to be unknowable, unthinkable evil, that's just missing a great opportunity.

I'm not saying removing ALL of the X of Vengeance would necessarily make for the same story. As I said - the Talons have a legitimate, albeit forced reason to be there. What I don't feel was necessary to have the Juniour Talons of Vengeance involved in the story because they're the exact same faction, just with a different coat of paint. Sure, they're novel to fight, but they do not offer a novel story. Dark Astoria pretends it has two separate stories for the Knives and the Talons, but the truth of the matter is it has only one story that it reuses for both factions. And that just seems wasteful.

I forget where I read it, but I believe it was out of the game. It's possible I read it off a Paragon Times article. It's possible it's Virgil Tarikoss who said it, which makes it unreliable.

Yeah, but I wanted to see them more directly involved. I wanted to see what kind of tricks they'd pull out to fight a god, I wanted to see how far they'd go to save themselves. And I sure as sugar would have preferred to see them over the Talons of Vengeance 2.

Hey, if there's more to the Pantheon and more to Dark Astoria, I'd love to see it. Like I said, the story is great, I just wanted to see more of it However, I get the feeling that they're pretty much done. Mot's done for, the rest of their gods are still trapped and now Tielekku's back. Sure, she takes off for the spirit world because of the reason, but one has to assume she'll be keeping an eye on Earth for the foreseeable future if she almost got eaten.

See, the thing is I really don't have a problem with what was IN Dark Astoria. Pretty much everything in there is awesome, and I mean it. What I have a problem with is what WASN'T in there. I mean, if what we got was this awesome, imagine how cool it would have been to see super-Circle or super-Malta or more of the Tsoo and just... More. I don't know when and where the next Incarnate zone will be, but I just have some degree of doubt about it picking up where Dark Astoria left off.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I'm sure their nanite-empowered goons will be waiting to give us a hearty "Thanks, suckers! Eat sapper rifle!" just as we've finished mopping up the Battalion.

I found it. It is indeed a Paragon Times article.

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Paragon_Times/20050615

It seems like Tielekku was mainly upset at the fact that teaching mortals magic would encourage them to stop worshiping the gods (thus weakening them. Ironically, she's weakened when we actually encounter her, perhaps for this very reason) and apparently stopped pursuing Ermeeth once he was initially defeated and forced to retreat. Hequat was the one who pursued him further by forming the nation of Mu specifically to combat Ermeeth's people, the Oranbegans.

I don't have much else to say that hasn't already been said in this thread, but I will say that I thought the revelation of the Sentinel's true identity was an excellent twist (I also found the personal story that revealed it to be particularly effective).

Why would they target a female-only villain group? I'd think the concept of vengeance was more universal than that (it certainly was when they tried to omnomnom the Carnival of Vengeance - which I think you stop by killing all the carnies? I forget). The Talons seems to snatch up anyone who's angry, rather than run recruitment drives. Maybe It's just me not getting how it works.

Anyway. It would be neat if the Talons of Vengeance' consisted of random members from most, if not all, villain groups in game.